What this line means
The number of months the child lived with you in the United States during the tax year. The child must have lived with you for more than half the year — more than six months. Enter the number of months (for example, “12” if the child lived with you all year, or “7” if the child lived with you from June through December). Temporary absences for school, medical care, business, vacation, or military service count as time lived with you.
Does this apply to you?
- You have a qualifying child who lived in your home for more than six months during the tax year
- You have a child away at college but who returns home during breaks
- You have a child who was temporarily in a hospital, rehabilitation facility, or residential treatment
- You are a military service member whose child lived at your home of record while you were deployed
- You share custody and the child lived with you for the majority of the year
Easy to overlook
Temporary absences count as time lived with you A child away at college, summer camp, boarding school, or a medical facility is considered to be living with you during that time. Military deployment of either you or the child also counts. A child who lived at your address from January through May, went to summer camp for two months, and returned in August has 12 months of residency — not 10. Filers who send children to boarding school or extended summer programs sometimes undercount months and report fewer than seven. 1 IRS Publication 596 — Residency test and temporary absences
The home must be in the United States The residency test requires that the child lived with you in the United States — the 50 states and the District of Columbia. U.S. military personnel stationed abroad are treated as living in the United States, but civilians living abroad are not. If you and your child lived outside the United States for the entire year, the residency test fails even if the child lived with you every day. U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands) do not count as the United States for this test. 2 IRS Schedule EIC instructions — Line 6 U.S. residency requirement
Watch out for this
Entering months based on a custody agreement rather than where the child actually slept. The IRS cares about physical presence, not the legal custody schedule. If the custody agreement says 50/50 but the child actually spent eight months at your home and four at the other parent’s home, you enter 8. Custody paperwork does not override reality. The parent with whom the child physically lived for more than half the year claims the EIC.
Footnotes
-
IRS Publication 596, Earned Income Credit (EIC), Residency Test, Temporary Absences. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p596.pdf ↩
-
IRS Schedule EIC (Form 1040) Instructions, Line 6, United States Requirement. https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040seic ↩